urge parliamentary scrutiny of the state within a state of the Khakis, especially the dreaded spy agency (DGFI). The interference of the Khakis into state politics will once again jeopardize institutionalization of elective democracy, good governance and secularism. The rogues fear social justice activists, critics, politicians and journalists too - Joy Manush!

Friday, September 14, 2012

Is Britain's Aid Funding a Political Crackdown in Bangladesh?

File Photo: Sheikh Hasina meets Ed Miliband

ELLIOT WILSON

WHAT A few weeks
it has been for that Machiavellian matriarch Sheikh Hasina. She swished into London in August to bookmark the Olympic Games (opening
and closing ceremony tickets for Bangladesh's premier - no messing
around with an either/or scenario).

In between trips
to her home in London
she found time to meet her key diplomatic allies and financial backers: prime
minister David Cameron, foreign secretary William Hague, opposition leader Ed
Miliband, and the now former international development secretary, Andrew
Mitchell. Never one to shy away from the limelight, Hasina was even afforded
the privilege and prestige of a reception at Downing
Street.

But while canapés
were nibbled in London SW1A, back in Dhaka,
Hasina's henchmen were busy disassembling the country's fragile democratic
apparatus in the most sustained assault on freedom of speech in the 41 years
since independence.

Last month, Bangladesh's
supreme leader ordered the arrest of Mir Quasem Ali, a leading member of the
Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami, who also runs a charitable
organisation named after the great Arab polymath Ibn Sina.

Ali's lesser
crime is less his political and philosophical ideology, and more the 15 million
people he reaches via newspapers like Naya Diganta, part of a Jamaat-owned
media group. His greater crime though, it would appear, is his very public
criticism of a war crimes tribunal set up by Hasina after her Awami League
party rose to power in 2008.

This tribunal,
which veers between medieval show trial and outright witch-hunt - and includes
inventing witness statements, coaching witnesses, and interfering with judicial
appointments - has been denounced by everyone from the United Nations to the
United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Stephen J. Rapp.

Hasina's men love
the tribunal, which aims to bring to trial anyone involved in the ghastly
events surrounding the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, where it is alleged
that three million people were killed, and up to 400,000 women were raped. The
cause is worthy but, say critics, its underlying motives are purely political.
All those so far arrested are opponents of Hasina, many from Jamaat-e-Islami. Happily
for Bangladesh's
premier, none of those on (show-) trial are from her side of the political fence.

Ali's arrest is
merely the latest of a string of concerted attacks on Hasina's opponents,
including the intimidation of journalists and a sustained and unpalatable
assault on Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, in an attempt to undermine
and nationalise his trailblazing microfinance lender Grameen Bank.

It's strangely
sad that this medieval madness is taking place just 5,000 miles away from an
Olympic village whose athletes and overseers trumpet the causes of freedom,
inclusivity and progress. And its ironic in the extreme that Britain's
political leaders should be condoning and even championing a woman bent on
denying those very human rights to her people.

But still the
bullying continues on the subcontinent. Earlier this month, almost the entire
elected membership of the opposition Bangladesh National Party bar its leader
was arrested. A litany of charges now awaits the main opposition leader,
Khaleda Zia, and her family: Zia charges that these accusations are pure
retribution on the part of her political nemesis, Sheikh Hasina.

None of this
bodes well for elections next year. In her meeting with Ed Miliband, Hasina
stated that "all the future elections in Bangladesh will be held in a
complete fair and neutral manner". Few believe that any election in Bangladesh can
be either 'free' or 'fair' so long as she retains supreme power. Later, in a
BBC interview, Hasina proclaimed that her opposition back home enjoyed every
possible political and democratic right.

Perhaps she
believes this to be true. Perhaps she believes that her opponents are indeed
truly guilty of heinous crimes, while her political cronies and cohorts are
above the fray, innocent and pure, garlanded with roses and perfume. Yet if
this really is the case, it would seem strange that she is denying any of the
accused at the war crimes tribunal access to proper legal representation. Last
year, Jamaat-e-Islami's British lawyer Toby Cadman, a respected human rights
lawyer practicing at London's 9 Bedford
Row International, was detained on arrival in DhakaAirport,
despite his international credentials. Cadman was held for ten hours before
being expelled from Bangladesh
on the next Dubai-bound plane. His request for a visa to return to Bangladesh to
defend his clients have been met with a steely silence. Ironically, during the
previous Government when Sheikh Hasina was leader of the opposition, and faced
trial herself, her defence team was assisted by the presence of Cherie Booth
QC, wife of former PM, Tony Blair.

Hasina's assault
on freedom is one that the British government has the financial and political
resources to stop - right now. Yet both our government and our opposition are
doing precisely nothing to halt events in Dhaka,
preferring to stick their fingers in their ears and hold their nose.

The now former
International development secretary Mitchell refused to comment on the
treatment of Yunus at all - until finally putting pen to paper in a letter of
reply addressed to Cadman, published in the September 7 edition of the Daily
Telegraph. Meanwhile the UK High Commission in Dhaka
refused to condemn the arrest of opposition politicians. The Department for
International Development (DFID) and the Foreign Office are complicit in this
crackdown on democracy and freedom of expression.

The British
Government, through DFID, directly funds Bangladesh to the tune of £250
million a year, and has plans to increase this support to £1 billion over the
next three years. This makes the UK the chief funder of its former
colony, money that is currently handed over, directly to Hasina's cronies, with
no strings or conditions attached.
So what is to be done? Firstly, the British Government must make
direct-to-government aid to Bangladesh
conditional on freedom of expression. In the last ten years the country has
been listed last a total of five times in the annual Transparency International
Corruption Perceptions Index. But when the British Government is providing
funds unconditionally to a country with such fundamental deficiencies, then it
is incredulous this comes without strings attached.
Secondly, Britain
and others must demand that all trials, whether for war crimes or otherwise,
are conducted in accordance with universal standards of due process with full
respect to the presumption of innocence, before a tribunal that is impartial
and independent of the ruling party.
Finally, the British Government has to acknowledge that its funding modus
operandi isn't working. In recent weeks, the UK
has withheld aid to Rwanda's
leader Paul Kagame, whose administration has been linked to alleged human
rights abuses, at home and abroad. In Bangladesh, the government's
crackdown against human rights and freedoms are not even alleged - they are
plain for all to see.

Few but the most
virulent hawks would deny that international aid has its benefits, but the
British coalition government is taking its liberal stance on foreign aid
funding to the absolute extreme. By channeling billions of pounds of
unconditional funding into the maw of a truly noxious foreign leader more
interested in witchhunts and her world standing than with promoting and
protecting human rights or democracy, Britain is starting to look a complicit
and even active part of the awful events unfolding on the subcontinent.

We need to change
how we fund not just Bangladesh,
but many countries. If a country's leaders use UK taxpayers' money to subjugate
their own people in the covert name of political retribution, it is time for us
to make a change. Surely people of the intelligence of Cameron, Hague and
Miliband should be able, at the very least, to understand this very real
pilgrim's progress.